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WesternFront - new total conversion (Sealion & ETO style) mod for CMAK


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I've just uploaded a Beta version of this new mod set at GaJ's CMMODS website http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/. This conversion contains over 9000 bitmaps split across 7 large zips, and much thanks to GaJ for agreeing to host it for free - please donate!). Although fairly complete I'm still calling this is a "beta". Please only give feedback on any errors or pinking, permissions or credits I've missed out, or offers to help add to this conversion (please no feedback about historical accuracy or other preferences or wants...) thanks. Either ask on this thread, or PM me or use the email address in the zips' readme file (especially email me if you are reading this some time from when it was written, or if I don't answer via the forum within a week).

What is it?

This is a massive collection of bitmaps that changes CMAK into a Sealion & ETO game. The "All Combined" theatre and (from the winter of 1943/44 onwards, the "Italy" theatre also) becomes England or France. There's a lot of new (remodded CMAK and CMBB) scenery, buildings (modded or tweaked Sealion/ETO English and Normandy stuff), as well as recoloured armour, and renumbered and tweaked uniforms. The "North Africa" theatre also becomes an Operation TORCH or Mediterranean or winter-Africa (i.e. greener, cold-weather uniforms etc), but in this beta the Med/winter-Africa conversion is imcomplete.

Why a "Total Conversion"?

Most of these bitmaps are desatuarated (i.e. less colour, and often darkened/lightened to match together) and so probably won't match most other mods very well, and they are converted to 8-bit colour where possible. Also, although in the past there were several good efforts on Sealion (such as CMWest), it was never 100% complete and looks-wise the other Sealion mods were a bit of a mish-mash of ideas and theatres/periods.

Anything not included?

I'd liked to have included Gurra's Westfront Interface mod but I haven't yet heard from him. But I recommend you use it with my conversion.

Why also add another version of ETO?

Because my conversion is desaturated, you couldn't just use the early part for Sealion and yet also keep Inglett's current ETO in the same BMP folder without some disparity. And my ETO is not identical to Inglett's, though it reuses a tweaked form of many of Inglett's (and some others') ETO mods. And I've just gone for looks, and matching tri-camo where possible, tweaking for visual consistency, over any concerns of historical precision. My version also includes new snow-versions for some models not previously provided for.

Credits:

Me (took 2 years), but I also re-used ideas, and recoloured or tweaked many other modders' works as well. And so they should share all credits:

Major credits (in no particular order): MikeyD, Andrew Fox, David Inglett, Mark Ezra, Wicky, Tanks-a-Lot and Juju.

Other important credits (in no particular order): HeinzBaby, Gurra, Alexoscar, Gordon Molek, Aristoteles, Marco Bergman, RockinHarry, Caffino, badjuju_4, Gautrek,Junk2Drive, Pat, Vossie, Ypenburg, Navy, Sequoia, Limey, Tracer, Samurai_man, Lucky_Strike, Daffy, UncleTgt, and probably others too (please let me know if I've missed you out! and I apologise and will add you in).

Cheers

Streety

How to install: - see readme file in the first zip.

Issues and other notes: - see readme file in the first zip.

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This is awesome. Heading over to CMMODS to d/l now.

Will take a while to try em out though. Am in BB10 tourny and still have to do setup for scenario 3, and so many other games to complete, plus I'll be traveling till end of July.

But, this is really appreciated and I look forward to some SeaLion (and early war) games when I get back!

PS: I know that when you split a CM1 squad during a game they take a morale hit. However, do they take a morale hit if they are split in the editor? Do they take a morale hit if you split squads during the initial set-up turn?

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You're welcome! I should just recap the origin of this mega-mod for those who haven't followed the "CMWest Complete at CMMODS?" thread. I began this as a purely private conversion, with no intention to release it - especially given that many have now moved on to CMBN etc. However, there remained a trickle of interest in CMWest - probably because for anyone still interested in a Sealion campaign, converting CMAK is still the best option. Yet I found that it was a long hard slog: the Sealion stuff out there was of mixed quality, not always complimentary, and not complete, and strangely some of it adopted the desert region rather than the all-combined.

And even for the late-war ETO mod-set, unless you happened to be savvy enough to know what it is (European Theatre of Operations: essentially meaning to convert Italy into northern France and beyond) or know of Inglett's ETO set and where to find it (I didn't but now do: http://www.tspindler.de/cmak_mod/), you faced a long slog piecing it all together from the CMMODS site (and the same goes for Sealion).

And even with the aid of ETO, CMWest and a sprinkling of other existing mods, it's still a big effort to piece it together, figure out past mistakes and differing ideas. Only to find they don't all match in terms of brightness and hue etc. And some mods turned too red, blue or greeny purple for dusk, dawn or night battles. And even when they didn't, I still found their technicolour way, way, too lurid and bright, not just for the garish later German camo (or the earlier grau that on my screen looked more like bright blue) but the buildings, trees, skies...everything. This might all look (a bit more) acceptable on the clear sunny slopes of southern Italy or California (where I've visited), but Britain is far more drab, and northern France only a little better.

But tweaking all the excess-colour out and rebalancing 9,150-odd bitmaps is a major pain. So, I've packaged up my long modding-journey - not because I claim it to be perfect or the "last word" but merely freely offered in the hope of saving others some of the effort (and maybe take it forward themselves). It includes my retweaked elements of CMWest, ETO and other Sealion stuff, and other CMAK mods or ideas, along with much of my own work, all suitably desaturated to a hopefully more naturalistic colour and all balanced to compliment each other.

And until/unless it gets included within the package, please use Gurra's westfront interface mod (also found at CMMODS) with this conversion.

And please, please donate to GaJ to help keep CMMODS http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/ going - huge thanks to him for hosting this conversion for free.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PS - oh, sorry Erwin, I know far less about squad-splitting morale issues than you do...

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OK, two separate single pink pixels on default summer fir tree 503.bmp (which you can fix yourself with MSPaint if you don't want to wait for my published fixes - both on the left, one high, one low, both amid the branches). Apologies for not spotting them before. I may be tweaking the trees further anyway, so depending on how much needs correcting/updating, I'll either issue an update zip, or re-issue the relevant folder zip in time.

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FYI for others, for some reason Streety's "Author" name is listed twice at GaJ CMMods under CMAK.

Upon further reconnoiter one is listed as "Streety" the other "streety". Upper and lower case in the author name. Just an FYI for others looking for these mods.

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Thanks Blazing, yes, there's two of me. I am both "Streety" and "streety". The three CMAK "Streety" mods on CMMODS were put there by GaJ (or others) when GaJ created the site with my old mods from the previous database without my knowing about it. Whereas the 44 others (across all 3 CM1 games) were put on by me when I first found GaJ's site by accident some time later. But unfortunately I couldn't sign up as "Streety" (as it was taken by the fake twin they'd created) and so I had to use "streety" instead. GaJ was supposed to remove the three old "Streety" mods after I re-uploaded them under my "streety" name, but he never got around to it, and I can't access them myself. Sorry. Perhaps this will prompt him to do it - I'll ask him again.

Cheers for pointing it out.

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Thanks GaJ! My evil twin is dead, long live streety!

Just a note on the forthcoming update/fix zip. In addition to the one fir tree (503.bmp) mentioned before, I've tweaked a couple of other trees to remove bright green pixels that don't notice at close-medium ranges but oddly do show up when the trees are viewed from far away. And currently there is too much difference in shade between where the upper back of the British uniform joins the upper back of the arms. I've been tweaking to reduce the effect.

I've never been keen on the British winter jerkins (neither my tweaked nor Fox's version) when viewed at night, but yet to figure out anything better. The current late-war British uniforms are darker than the summer (the idea was that they'd look darker for being wet) but I'm going off that idea and may revert them to the summer shade.

About 25 sets of the beta have been downloaded - please alert me to any errors any of you find. I'll probably stop calling this a beta when this first update/fix zip is published. After that, it could be a long while before any other changes/add-ons such as the winter-Africa region are completed unless anyone else takes it on.

Enjoy, cheers.

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Just spotted a key missing word in my last message, but too late to use the edit function. The second sentence of the second para should read: The current late-war British WINTER uniforms are darker than the summer (the idea was that they'd look darker for being wet) but I'm going off that idea and may revert them to the summer shade.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Ok, I've just uploaded a small update patch at CMMODS, called "WesternFront total conversion for CMAK, part 8 of 8". This 8th zip-folder takes the previous 7 "beta" zip-folders to a "version 1.0". I'll get around to renaming the other 7 folders accordingly - note, you don't need to download them all again, you just need the 8th one to fully update the set.

The patch contains a fixed version of the one fir tree (503.bmp) that was spotted as having two pinked pixels, and I've included further minor tweaks to some other trees, along with a re-tweaked set of early and late-war British uniforms. I'm still happy to take feedback on errors and credits omissions, or offers to take any of this humble offering forward.

Don't forget there are some alternative bitmaps in many of the 8 zip-folders (some alternative armour, uniform, terrain and interface bitmaps). Some of these are in separate sub-folders but others are just in the main folders but given alternate names - for example you can choose between Churchill, Monty or Patton as your single-player photo in the interface game-type selection page, switch-out a few different trees, and swap some of the armour and uniforms, all by renaming your preferred bitmap to remove any wording (eg, "12345-plain.bmp" would be renamed to "12345.bmp" and then put into the game's BMP folder).

Otherwise, have a happy war. Just try not to damage the English countryside - remember, our badgers and hedgehogs are protected species and blowing them up, or damaging any pub, is an international war crime...

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You're welcome! And if nothing else happens with this total conversion I just wanted to let readers know that though I can't promise any further updates, I'll certainly still consider updates to correct any errors not yet found. But as far as I'm concerned, everyone is welcome to further mod it themselves - this, after all, is not an attempt to be a know-it-all mod, its just the freely offered result of my own bitmap folder after 18months-2yrs messing around with my and others' mods....

Meanwhile, just a little note to point out that if you don't like the new carrier idea I've come up with to cure the passenger interference problems, previously shown in preview here:

And a few more previews:
there are optional bitmaps to have a normal carrier without the cut-out sections. Just look in the 1940-43 BritCom Armour folder for bitmaps numbers 17461, 17463, 17466 and 17470 and replace these versions with the ones that have "-standard" added to the same number. To replace, simply delete the numbered version and then rename the standard version by removing the "-standard" after the number. In the 1943-45 BritCom Armour folder, the relevant carrier bitmaps numbers are 117461, 117463, 117466 & 117470, and the standard versions have "-plain" added after their number. There are a few other things like this, so it's always worth scanning the bitmap folders to have a look at some of the options.
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Thanks Aragorn, comments are appreciated! especially when I work and play alone and don't know anyone in person to get feedback from any other way. Of course, much credit goes to many others whose earlier work or ideas (see first post) I've reused/remodded.

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1) Since releasing zip number 8 (the update patch), I've noticed one more tree (the lightest of the autumn ones) that may need a similar tweak to remove a few bright pixels that look OK at short-medium range, but oddly show up at long range. Also, the lack of green in the all-combined's winter non-snow ground looks fine in the day but at night it creates a greater disparity in hue between different tiles, so you can sometimes clearly see the difference where they join. If this is a problem for you, just use the summer grass. I'll keep these two issues in mind for a possible second update.

2) Call me an idiot (ouch, my ears! - don't all say it at once!), but I never expected downloaders would "pick and choose" certain zips (I simplistically assumed people would want all or nothing). I had put a zip index in the first zip folder, but here it is again to save time for those future readers who don't want the whole thing (all zips are available at the CMMODS site):-

WesternFront-1

This contains 4 parent folders: semovente tanks, BritCom armour 1940-43, German armour 1941-43, and all Italian armour (also contains the main readme file and this contents file).

WesternFront-2

This contains 3 parent folders: optional 1943 Africa, all early-war uniforms, and the Westernfront shared folder (shared = common bitmaps such as certain terrain, small arms, interface unit and location images, etc.).

WesternFront-3

This contains 2 parent folders: a set of English buildings, and a set of Normandy buildings.

WesternFront-4

This contains 2 parent folders: an all-combined default terrain, and all-combined winter terrain (further to the terrain in the shared folder in zip2 above, these terrain folders are specifically for changing the all-combined theatre, to create four seasons plus a snow version).

WesternFront-5

This contains 2 parent folders: late-war German summer armour, and late-war German winter armour (this may have some wider appeal because I modded some snow versions of models for which I couldn't find any existing mods).

WesternFront-6

This contains 1 parent folder: BritCom armour 1943-45

WesternFront-7

This contains 2 parent folders: all late-war uniforms, and all US armour.

Westernfont-8

This contains an update patch of tweaked early and late British uniforms, tweaked trees and one corrected tree.

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